Tuesday, August 14, 2012

FEATURE: LoEB ''Mix Tape''

Here's our latest submission for this week's League of Extraordinary Bloggers, which this week is all about the CHOONS (as the kids say these days.)

Taking a break from the usual ubergeekness and discussions over which superhero had the best powers, Brian posed the following:

What songs were forever being looped on your car’s stereo back in high school. A cassette could only hold a dozen or so songs, so that’s the magic number of songs to list. If your car didn’t have a cassette deck in high school, go ahead and pretend it did, you punk.

Here's my rather awesome and schizophrenic selection.

First up, it's those pranksters Laibach with their reinvention of Queen's One Vision, Geburt Einer Nation. I used to have a neighbor I didn't particularly like, so this whole album got a lot of play in the Iok household.

Next is Finland Red, Egypt White by Sisters of Mercy front-man Andrew Eldritch's copyright-retaining side-project, The Sisterhood. Seriously. He recorded an album just to piss off Wayne ''The Mission'' Hussey and stop him from using the name. See back then if you got into a feud with another musician, you didn't just shoot him: you sued him for copyright infringement and then recorded an album to cement the deal.

There's not much I can say about Fields of the Nephilim, except that the Christian Right who get upset about ''modern shock rock'' would probably have a heart attack with this lot. There's actually a song constructed around mathematical ''magick'' principles that's designed to invoke Cthulhu and Nylarthotep in the hopes of bringing about the world's destruction. It's got a pretty kicking bassline, too. But sadly that song is just outside of our specific timeslice, so here's the rather excellent Trees Come Down instead.

Next it's a charming little ditty from Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. Directed by Ade ''Young Ones'' Edmondson, Prime Mover was a pretty big hit for the band and was THE cover version every live band seemed to have in their repertoire that Summer. Sadly they never managed to recapture the public's attention in quite the same way but I like to think they at least paved the way for The Darkness.

Next it's the turn of The Cult. Although the spangly spazzed-out sitar-like riff may may sound more akin to something you'd hear in a ''Holistic Well Womyn Center'' She Sells Sanctuary is still a pretty kick-ass number. It's particularly fun watching Big Country drummer Mark Brzezicki trying to blend in with this band of dirty hippies.

Danielle Dax's Cathouse was a song that I always had mixed feelings about. As much as I loved it she never managed to catch that same awesome retro-spooky vibe (at least for me) and that was always a disappointment. But here's her finest moment (aside from being the Wolfgirl in The Company of Wolves.)

As I mentioned before, Laibach's Opus Dei was a very popular choice in my household (even if it wasn't for my neighbors) so here's another choice cut, their version of Opus' feel good Euro hit, Life is Life. And although again, it falls out of the appropriate time period, you should also check their cover of Sympathy for The Devil and Europe's The Final Countdown.

Now for a quick call-back. We mentioned Big Country above, so here they are with the only song that ever broke in the US, but was the first of many hits in their native UK, In a Big Country (and apologies for the mimed performance but I couldn't find the official video.) As I grew older my musical tastes shifted somewhat (as you can see from the other tracks here) but this song will always have a special place in my heart - mainly due to the time I once woke the entire house up playing it on the day we went back to school...

Here's Fields of the Nephilim again, in the (rather cheap) Richard Stanley-directed video for Blue Water.

We namechecked him earlier, but now here's Andrew Eldritch with The Sisters of Mercy's Dominion/Mother Russia. It was tough to choose a specific Sisters song, as there were so many excellent ones but this song holds particularly good memories for me.

And finally, here's the blisteringly brilliant Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus. Recorded ''live'' in the studio this epic track fuses elements of what would become known as Goth with dub and avante garde musical experimentation. I honestly don't know if I had this on my mix tape but I don't think it's unfair to select one do-over, is it?